Category Archives: celebrity

I’m immensely proud to present my latest testing / portfolio shoot. It just came out in the semiannual printed Workbook. It’s the kind of conceptual shoot I get deep into — like staging a one-act play. You’ll find more (the great Milo Cawthorne with a dead fish in his mouth) on the website.

Shooting at the beach! What fun, right?

Right. But also sort of hell. Sand gets in everything, no matter how many blankets you lay down and how many lights you clamp up high. Without warning the tide surges up and soaks your stuff. The bathrooms are a hike. Seagulls attack your food. There’s nowhere to plug in. Wind topples anything not weighed down with 50 pounds of sandbags. Whether the tide is rising or falling, you’re constantly moving your actors and carefully placed lights with it. When it’s all over, your lenses and cameras are coated with a fine layer of gear-killing salt. Now go home and try to work the sand out of your 15 rented C-stands.

For those of you who are wondering: these images were all done in-camera. No compositing or mixing and matching in post. Great talent, careful coordination and lots of lighting.

Many thanks to the phenomenally talented actors (from right to left in that last shot): Ari Boyland, Milo Cawthorne, Olivia Tennet, Mike Ginn, David Delatour and Fleur Saville. Plus Paul Bennett, who nailed the octopus-head role. And makeup/hair stylist Stephanie Lawrence and always-on-the-ball assistant PJ McMullan.

Got to shoot the amazing David and Travis Wear recently. They’re the UCLA basketball stars who, as twins, take every class together and spend an average of only 30 minutes apart every day. Get them to dribble, and the balls will end up in unison. Stand them next to each other, and they each lean toward the other at identical angles. Ask them a question, and they’ll finish each other’s sentences.

For some reason I’ve had this image in my head for a few years now. It involves Victorian mariners lost on a boat, stranded perhaps, not going to say where since this is just a teaser. I had to get it out of my head and on to film (so to speak), so I gathered props and wardrobe and brilliant actors and my favorite crew from around the city, and I finally shot the thing. Took five days of scouting just to find the location. My little 35mm f/2 lens literally fell apart after I found the location near dark on the fifth day.

It’s probably my favorite shoot ever. Look for it in the spring 2013 Workbook, out in less than a month. In the meantime, there’s a fragment of it on my website, and I offer you these fine behind-the-scenes shots from my friend, the great photographer Max Gerber:

Even sailors need a little touch-up now and then.

I swear I’m not posing. Didn’t even know Max was shooting.

Wayne “Animal” Lewis. We had to tie him to the boat.

Not sure what YOHA means.

Because every shoot needs a starlet: Rose McIver, the not-dead sister from “The Lovely Bones.”

Milo Cawthorne, another great New Zealand actor and the source of my best jokes.

Props table.

That one’s perfect. Let’s shoot 140 more.

The talent and crew went way beyond my dreams for this one. My heartfelt thanks to all of you:

If you said, “a young Clint Eastwood” with a little swagger, this is not your lucky day. That’s his son, Scott, whom I shot recently for an editorial spread. Nice guy. Funny (in the article, one of his dislikes was, “people with celebrity parents.”) A quintessential North County (San Diego) surfer bro. And a good actor.

How crazy is that? It’s like time travel.

He didn’t like my beach setup.

I think “portrait on a beach” immediately sounded cheesy to him, as it probably should. Still, he put up with it. Thanks, Scott. And thanks to Gillian Flynn at Riviera San Diego, the take-no-prisoners editor who has hired me everywhere she’s been since we started working together seven years ago.

I shot this international campaign for Casio watches a while back, and it’s time to show some finished images. The shoot began without concept or content, just a long list of watches to feature and a reminder to make them look great. Over the next few weeks, Kesha’s label and I came up with five concepts that would be doable in a single day while she was on tour.

The concepts also had to work with her tribal/pirate/hippie/punk aesthetic, which is no small feat. Kesha nailed every setup.

Notable moments from the shoot:

Hearing Casio executives exclaim excitedly in Japanese as the images appear on the monitor.

After spending most of the day with my standard electronica soundtrack, Kesha asks us to “play something with some balls.” Who knew?

We switch to Led Zeppelin and the White Stripes.

For the final setup, prop master Shannon Amos busts out the glitter gun, raining metallic confetti down on the set.

I continue to find glitter in my lighting cases for the next several months.

Many thanks to Casio America, Sony Music, my crew and Kesha’s glam team, who always make her look great.

In late 2011 Los Angeles Magazine commissioned me to shoot Bollywood superstar Anil Kapoor, who played the game-show host in “Slumdog Millionaire” and the Indian tycoon in the latest “Mission Impossible.” He’s also starred in 100 or so Indian films, which must be awesome. Anil has a fantastic range and was a joy to work with.

I pulled out all the stops for this shoot, scouting for two days beforehand, gathering props, hammering out concepts. Throughout a long day with six separate portrait setups, Anil was game for everything I could throw at him. The longer we shot, the more he ramped it up. It was one of the best collaborations I’ve ever had on a shoot.

A few things you might like to know:

While we had makeup artist Veronica Sinclair on hand, Anil seemingly brought his own groomer from India. “Deepak,” he’d call, and this nice Indian man would pop up to do some primping.

That’s my grandfather’s ancient Colt .38.

That’s also my banjo.

I think we scared the publicist out of her wits, having Anil waving a gun and an American flag on camera like a maniac. Like I said, he was game for anything.